Sprint’s new device lineup leaked
Thanks to someone who knows someone and so on, the mobile device roadmap for Sprint has been leaked.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/03/16/sprints-q1-q3-2009-device-roadmap-leaks/
Most interesting to me is the GSM HTC version of the Touch Pro, the HTC Rhodium. Being locked down to CDMA only has been one of the only setbacks from the HTC Touch Pro being the “superphone”.
Great find!
VMware on Nokia N800
I had joked with someone recently saying it would be great if the would port windows mobile to my Nokia N810 device. Well the VMware guys have exceeded my expectations unveiling a VMware mobile on a nokia device. They expect to release this sometime in 2009.
Way cool!
More info at this link:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/vmware-mvp-windows-and-android-on-the-same-phone.ars
See it in action here:
Pandora Fans rejoice for Desktop Beta
Up until now there had only been a gadget for Pandora and I’m not a regular user of the sidebar in Vista so I haven’t been using it. But, now there is a resident program for managing your stations quite easily.
Try it here : http://www.pandora.com/desktop
New Windows Mobile Search
On Tuesday, Microsoft released version 4.0 of Windows Live Search Mobile, its downloadable search and map app for Windows Mobile 5 and 6, which the company demoed last week at CES.
Go to http://wls.live.com
With this release, Microsoft is finally starting to catch up to other free clients doing mobile voice and text search on other platforms–Google Mobile App, Yahoo Go, and Vlingo among them.
Taking a page from Google’s book, perhaps, the new Locate Me feature in Windows Live Search Mobile can work on non-GPS phones to zero in on your approximate location. If that fails, you can easily add your location manually instead.
Predictive text is also new–when you type a query into the search box, the app will suggest a search term in order to save your fingers some typing. The app did better remembering past queries than it did predicting new ones, and it did not begin suggesting new search terms until we were almost done typing them.
In addition, the search box will now accept mixed queries; for instance, if you speak or type a business name and city into the search box, you’ll see results for the business in that second location, without changing your master location. Hunting down a Dunkin’ Donuts in Boston when you’re living in San Francisco is one example.
Bird’s Eye View is the splashiest of the added features, adding a third mode to map-viewing that’s akin to Google’s Street View. The landmarks we saw were clear, but the view is limited to “select urban areas” and grays out if the one you want isn’t part of it. We hope the selection will expand soon.
These additions enhance Windows Live Search’s otherwise well-integrated features–click-to-call, SMS, driving directions, and search modules that focus on traffic, movies, gas stations, and weather in your area.
Xohm getting closer to reality
A big milestone in WiMAX history.
As you may remember, earlier this year Sprint and Clearwire announced an agreement to combine their next-generation wireless broadband businesses to form a new company to bring WiMAX to the market faster. Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks committed $3.2 billion to the new company.
And now, it’s official.
Announcing the new Clearwire. A true mobile broadband experience across the nation is now closer than ever.
Read the press release here, and be sure to check the Support section of xohm.com later this week for FAQs about the merger.
iphone application for Sonos
Thanks again to Engadget for the picture
Sonos is still in my opinion the best streaming whole house audio system on the market. They just sweetened the deal by delivering a new iphone ap store controller for free. Using Wifi, you can control your Sonos (or a friends sonos) system. Check out the demo here
It looks like it should also work with the ipod touch so long as ap store access is enabled. This would be almost half the price of the sonos controller if you like that sort of thing.
Sprint Touch Pro – First Impressions
I received my Sprint Touch Pro yesterday and performed an off-camera unboxing. There are plenty of videos up on youtube already if you are interested in seeing one. Also there is a good gallery over at Engaget of in hand shots.
Referenced from Engaget
My first impressions of the device have left me staggering. It was well worth waiting for and skipping the Mogul. Here are a few of my thoughts on the device so far, more posts to come.
- The build quality of the device is very high, the keyboard mechanism is more solid than the mogul/apache models, and slides out from the same side as the apache.
- The backlit keyboard is very good and the key feel is accurate, although the buttons feel slightly smaller than the apache counterpart.
- The stylus is magnetic like the diamond and alerts the phone that it needs to be ready and an extra one is included in the packaging.
- The touchflow interface is smooth so long as you don’t leave many (5+) applications in the background. Combined with the screen resolution, it provides the best Windows Mobile Navigation to date.
- Comes with Tomtom Pocket Express, need to test it more
- Windows Livesearch (available without this particular phone) rocks, the speak function works very well, where’s google voice activated search??
- The TV-out function (with the correct cable) has yet to be tested, but is a great feature not available on many smartphones. IT supports NTSC and PAL which almost all projectors have. It won’t be VGA quality, but in a pinch could serve very useful.
- The business card reader has yet to be tested, but it’s a great concept to be able to photograph a business card and have it OCR and import on the fly.
- Put the included screen protector on immediately after removing the Sprint shipping protector and be sure to make sure there aren’t any oils or dust on them.
- The inertial sensors are very sensitive as displayed by the maze/ball game.
- The screen resolution is striking, the pixel pitch is very hard to see (I couldn’t) even when looking very closely.
- Includes a 1gig Micro SD card
- The 3.2 MP camera does better than I’ve seen any phone. Decent controls and resolultion, video works well
- Active sync works like a champ, and a new configuration option was added to automatically setup your account (I think this was added in 6.0)
- The opera web browser (IE is still available) is very good an provides the scroll/zoom feature like the iphone New York Times Demo.
- Includes Acrobat Reader, a must.
- Includes an IM client that supports, AOL, MSN and Yahoo
- Includes JetCet Printing over Wifi. Printing from your phone!
- MP3 trimmer for those audio recordings and making ringtones on the fly
- RSS reader, does what it says..
- Sprint TV works much like the other phones but now has auto orientation depending on how you hold the phone
- Includes a dedicated youtube application that works well, but takes some time to buffer large videos
- Includes Windows Voice Command (push and hold the phone send key) I believe it’s v1.6
- Includes an audio booster for use with headsets and car BT pairings.
- I have yet to test the phone as modem, but it looks like the PCS vision option has been removed, so I’m curious if they are locking down on data access.
More to come!
Travel Recommendations from your friends! Earthfaves is Launched!
Everyone who knows my wife and I, know that our biggest vice is that we love to travel (if you can call that a vice). Our selection process is usually fairly calculated narrowing the list from the 193 countries of places we’d like to go, taking into account the season, the exchange rates, etc. However, what we haven’t had in the past is a system to link to our friends on places they have been and specifics about things they’ve liked. Sure there are other application mash ups with pins in maps (whoopee!), but they are bland and lack a true sense of warmth. So we finally have Earthfaves, the newest, most comprehensive site for travel recommendations from people YOU know.
Here’s a more eloquent teaser on the new website, I encourage you to check it out at www.earthfaves.com.
So you’re spending a couple days on business out of town. You’re up for a drink, maybe some BBQ, a baseball game or museum, but you have no idea where to go. Maybe you can call your buddy who lived there a couple of years after college. Or maybe you can call on 1,000 of your buddies all at once.
Getting recommendations from friends and colleagues is easy, reliable, and makes for a better experience when you’re on the go.
So what if you could search through the collective recommendations from all your friends – even those you haven’t already met – with a click of the mouse? Like a futuristic, remote brain scanner – filtering through the minds of your friends and colleagues from around the globe – pushing you all of their recommended places. Anything from a hip bar, an amazing deli, a hotel with an awesome breakfast buffet, to a relaxing beach or even quiet park with Wifi access. Priceless information you can’t get in a guide book.
Use the collective intelligence from a network that you build, and keep up-to-date on all sorts of amazing places.
It’s simple to get started. Log in, add the places you’d recommend to your friends, invite them to join your network, and have them do the exactly same.
Reliable, searchable recommendations from a source you can trust.
Happy Traveling!
Ryan
Fuel Cells! 2012?!
Despite all our advances in technology, I still charge my darn phone daily. It may be because of the high horsepower devices we have, but I I’m looking forward to the day we can just have a fuel cell power all our devices.
Pannasonic announced the following on their Japanese website today “to improve mobility and increased output per volume for mobile devices has developed a fuel cell system. The traditional “fuel supply system,” a small high-power lithium-ion battery technology, in addition to the new, ※ 1 of the stack miniaturized technology, the BOP ※ 2 small low-power combination of direct methanol fuel cell ※ 3 system.
The adoption of this method of direct methanol fuel cell prototype, 2008 Oct. 22-24, held in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, hydrogen energy will help high-tech exhibition will be at 2008.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2008/1020/pana.htm
Sprint Touch Pro Delayed – Sometime in Nov
As reported by Cnet and a local anxious fellow geek, the news has broken that the Touch Pro from Sprint has been delayed. Bonnie Cha of Cnet quoted her Sprint contact:
“Sprint expects to slightly delay launch of the Touch Pro by HTC to ensure we have adequate inventory in all channels before making the device commercially available. Customers can expect the device to become available in select national retailers by the end of the month and then in all Sprint sales channels including online at www.sprint.com and Sprint Stores by early November.”
Boo. But I’ll still wait. 
Who do you trust? New Era of Trusted Internet
Most people know that I do almost everything online, from shopping to takeout, anything to login and get something done quickly. Well unfortunately, the Internet continues to fill with predators and with new threats each day. You never know if the link you follow from a blog or recommendation is going to be some one-off site that steals your identity or worse.
Luckily, some firms are taking a proactive approach to this growing problem. Comodo, who I use for all my SSL Certs through www.instantssl.com , is moving forward on a roadmap to create a network of a “Trusted Internet”. A network of trusted mechants, experts, and sites that are known to be safe and trustworthy. This process is not trivial to undertake, but a ubiquitous safe environment for commerce and data exchange is the future.
Amazon Expands Cloud Support for Databases!
I’ve been using the Amazon s3 storage solution for about 1.5 years now for inexpesive online storage. It’s cheap, fast and reliable. Many sites have been building their applications around the storage and hosting options lately.
In a recent (today) email to me, Amazon announced full support for databases in the cloud. This is a major step in flattening the architectures for many online applications as well as creating a lighter footprint.
Here’s the release in its entirety:
“We are excited to announce expanded options for developers and enterprises looking to host their databases on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform. AWS and Oracle have partnered together to certify Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as the first cloud computing platform that is authorized to run supported Oracle Databases. Along with Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), our fast and reliable persistent storage offering for Amazon EC2, this now gives you the flexibility to combine the robust, cost effective, dependable, and scalable AWS infrastructure with the database solution that most effectively meets your business needs.
Database options in AWS include:
Oracle Database
Oracle has officially certified Amazon EC2 as a supported platform on which to run their software. In addition, AWS has worked with Oracle to enable existing Oracle Database licenses to be transferred to Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS. This means that for no additional cost, you can use an existing Oracle license to run your database in AWS, saving yourself the cost and effort of managing your own infrastructure while keeping the same database software you are already running. Oracle has also enabled Amazon S3 as one of the default backup locations for their RMAN service, making it easy for you to protect your data. Check out more details about running Oracle in Amazon EC2 , along with some easy-to-use tools that can help you get started.
MySQL Enterprise Support
MySQL has long been a popular choice with Amazon EC2 developers, and with the addition of Amazon EBS it is even easier to use it with the AWS cloud. For those with a MySQL Enterprise subscription, MySQL now offers full support for Amazon’s industry-leading virtual computing environment. Developers can now cost-effectively deploy an open source database in the cloud with full software and production support by the database experts at MySQL. MySQL enterprise on Amazon EC2 offers developers optimal performance, reliability, security, and uptime. See more details about running a MySQL database on Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS , including a tutorial for the best practices on setting up a high availability MySQL database cluster using AWS.
Amazon SimpleDB
Amazon SimpleDB is a hosted database solution that enables enterprises to run queries on structured data in real time. Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database — real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data — without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. While still in limited beta, many customers are already taking advantage of Amazon SimpleDB to decrease their costs and improve their reliability and performance. Read more information on Amazon SimpleDB as well as case studies from existing customers.
The AWS team continues to work hard to expand the infrastructure features, software offerings and support options available for our cloud computing platform, and we look forward to bringing you additional announcements like this in the future.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team”
Dell Mini Hands on
There’s been a lot of buzz from the new Dell inspiron Mini lately. The guys over at Gadgetspot recorded the unboxing for those curious.
http://gadgetspot.co.uk/2008/09/12/dell-mini-9-netbook-unboxing/
Finally! The Sprint Touch Diamond Touch Pro! October 19th
Finally in an announcement at Cedia, Sprint announced the release of the Sprint Touch Diamond and Touch Pro.
The Diamond will be available starting Sept 14th and the Pro will be Oct 19th. Both at reasonable pricing of 249 and 299 respectively after the $100 term rebate.
Dell Inspiron Mini – great for travelers!
Ever want to bring a laptop on vacation for managing pictures/videos and staying in touch but don’t want to lug around the old heavy laptop from home? Well the n810 from Nokia has been out for a while but if your stuck on windows, then you may want to take a look at the new Dell Inspiron Mini 9.
Runs XP home or linux, with an 8.9 inch display, usb ports (great for large removable hard drives), bluetooth, vga out, the list goes on.
If I didn’t already have an X1 and N810, this may be on my list!
No more dedicated pc needed for home automation
For about 9 years I have been using home automation controllers to do things automatically that are typically nuisance repetitive items in our house. Especially useful during the holidays, all the Christmas lights throughout the house and all the window candles are hooked to one channel on a controller and go an and off automatically. Really basic things like our front lights that come on at dusk (a different time programmed each day) and off early in the morning are set and forget pervasive automations.
Well one of my timers finally expired at the front door and I’ve been in the market for a new whole house automation controller. With most HA controllers like Crestron and others costing 10’s of thousands in hardware and programming services, I was in the market for something high power, but lower cost.
Announced earlier this month, the guys over at homeseer (a long time home automation development company) is releasing their next version of the Hometroller.
Hometroller Series 2
Integrating with everything from the lighting, HVAC, Security, Voice Control, Phone systems, and even irrigation, it provides functionality that would normally be built into a pc (like my old one now retired). One would be hard pressed to create this functionality for less. I think that a nice clean piece of hardware would be less intimidating for resale than a maze of wires and a humming pc. 
Incidently, I’m not paid for this plug, I’m just a fan.
Wireless parking space availability alerts
I read this over at engaget mobile, but I thought it was a great concept. If you have ever been to the parking decks at Baltimore airport, you’ve seen the advanced parking availability alert system. As you drive up the ramps to each floor a system alerts the “floor aggregator” if there are any open parking spaces on that floor. If there are it then shows as you drive through the isles which isle has the open space, then as you drive down the isle a series of red and green led’s behind each space indicate at a glance the open spot.
This has been in place for about 5 years at least there, and was facinating to see implemented and useful.
Well now they bring that technology to the street level AND add alerting to mobile devices! People looking for parking spots can be alerted when a spot becomes available.
San Fran Parking to get wifi alerts for parking
Manage multiple twitter accounts with Matt
In a testament to Rapid application development the guys from Carsonified have just put the finising touches on the Mattinator a web tool to allow you to update multiple twitter accounts at once (and selectively.) Incidently, MATT stands for Multiple Account Twitter Tweeter.
Check it out at http://www.themattinator.com
Newegg Branching out to Home Appliances?
Everyone that knows me knows I have a portfolio of preffered vendors and for years newegg has been THE place to get computer hardware a better prices than the local Big Box and faster than any online retailer.
In my most recent shipment I saw a flyer than included, oddly enough a metal frog statue/outdoor fountain combination and I had to do a double take. My beloved Newegg?? outdoor fountains???
In a move that may be similiar to Amazon first offering books, then everything else.. newegg has stealthily started offering home appliances, including outdoor grills!
Hopefully they won’t be like costco and start offering coffins!
Crime Stats on GPS maps
It’s a little late I found this, but it was a recent edition of a periodical I receive.
Honda is offering (not in the U.S. yet) a crime statistics outline on their GPS maps so you can avoid high crime areas and re-route your journey. This would be very handy if you have a donut spare tire or running low on fuel, or .. perhaps looking for a hotel on a late stormy evening.
There are no plans currently to offer this in the U.S. as I would imagine no vendor has the confidence to come forward and offer it, yet.
